New iOS 7, iPhones make for good team

It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that anyone thinking about buying a new iPhone when the latest devices hit stores Friday would fixate on the hardware itself, especially with Apple trotting out two new models.

Apple is unleashing colorful handsets called the iPhone 5c, priced at $99 to start, with a contract. And a brand new $199-on-up flagship phone, the iPhone 5s, brings with it beefy 64-bit computing power, a souped-up camera and the feature most people are pointing to, the Touch ID fingerprint reader.

But the biggest change to come to the iPhone arrives with iOS 7, the operating system at the heart of the newest handsets.

As of Wednesday, it can also be downloaded to freshen up the iPhone 4, iPhone 4s and the now-discontinued iPhone 5 as well as some iPads and the iPod Touch.

I’m a little disappointed that Apple stuck to a 4-inch Retina display when many Android competitors offer 5-inch displays or larger.

Sure, there are trade-offs with larger screens, but because Apple has already bolstered consumer choice with two new iPhones, would a third model have been that much of a stretch?

Of that second new model, the iPhone 5c may have a cheaper price, relatively speaking, but there is nothing cheap about the phone.

Plastic be damned — the phone feels good in the hand. Apple says it is built around a steel frame that doubles as an antenna.

Apple didn’t cheap out on the inside, either, though the tech improvements in the 5c are fairly modest — better high-definition FaceTime camera, bigger battery, more LTE wireless options.

The iPhone 5c is a little heavier than the sub-4-ounce 5s and doesn’t claim the premium pedigree of its metallic sibling, which comes in gold, silver or “space gray.”

To me, the 5s is the iPhone to have, even though I consider the additions to the hardware to be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Photography. While the 8-megapixel camera in the 5c is very good, the shooter in the 5s is the one to brag about. It, too, is an 8-megapixel camera, but the pixels are larger, among other improved optics, resulting in excellent pictures.

Of course, there’s vibrant competition among camera phones nowadays, and companies such as Samsung, HTC and Nokia, among others, can already claim “been there, done that” with features Apple is just getting around to.

One fancy feature in the 5s is a burst mode that lets you snap up to 10 pictures a second and up to 999 in a single burst, terrific for shooting action. You can keep each photo if you want, but the iPhone helps you prune the selection by suggesting the best photos. But other devices, including Samsung’s Galaxy S4, also let you take a burst of shots.

Another feature in the 5s, auto image stabilization, can help a photographer compensate for the shakes by combining the best of four images into one. It works in video, too. You can also shoot slow-motion videos with the 5s and determine which part of the video to play in slow-mo — this, too, we’ve seen in other phones.

One thing not seen elsewhere is the True Tone flash system in the 5s. It is based on two flashes working in tandem to determine the intensity and best combination of flashes. I got generally lovely results taking flash photos, though I noticed it sometimes took an extra second or so before the camera actually took a picture.

Touch ID. The vaunted fingerprint reader built into the home button on the 5s isn’t merely a clever gimmick but something that’s actually useful for unlocking your device. I was able to unlock the phone with the thumb on my right hand while holding an umbrella in the rain with my left. Before, I had to fumble with a passcode. Moreover, it’s now more convenient to buy stuff in iTunes and the App Store using fingerprint authentication.

You have to train Touch ID by gently pressing and releasing the Home button multiple times, but it won’t take long. Apple lets you authenticate up to five fingers (you or a person you share the phone with), and you can type in a passcode if the phone fails to recognize your paw three times in a row.

Faster processing. Apple claims the A7 chip in the 5s is twice as fast as the A6 in the iPhone 5 and the 5c, with a new M7 motion co-processor sharing the load. The M7 can tell when you’ve parked and started walking, automatically adjusting the Maps app.

Consumers may not see much immediate benefit out of the 64-bit processing power in the 5s, the first mainstream smartphone to achieve that computing milestone. But the phone is faster, and you’ll likely see improvements playing certain games, or when you’re processing photos. Developers are drooling over the 64-bit. No less a tech authority than Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey told USA Today, “It’s such a big deal that it’s easy to forget. There’s this whole huge shift in the personal computer industry from 32 to 64, and it’s amazing that within just 10 years we’re doing the same with the phone.”

What about apps? There are more than 900,000 iOS apps. While apps are designed to be backward compatible with previous versions of the operating system, you could encounter a bug here or there during the transition to iOS 7, though I haven’t encountered any major issues. It also may take awhile for developers to fully exploit the translucent and motion effects in iOS 7.

Battery. I didn’t conduct formal battery tests on either new phone, but Apple claims you’ll do about the same or better in some cases compared with the iPhone 5. Both devices made it through an entire day of mixed use.

Adjusting to iOS 7. For all the chatter about what Apple has or hasn’t included in its latest phones, the most radical alterations arrive with iOS 7. Fonts have been redrawn (not to everyone’s liking, I’m sure). Apple scrapped the “skeuomorphic” design long associated with iOS in favor of a more modern, translucent experience. I think most people will come to embrace it. For example, the Notes app used to resemble a lined yellow notepad. Now, there’s a much cleaner off-white screen.

Among my quibbles: A dedicated “.com” key on the keyboard that had been on previous versions of iOS is no longer visible until you press and hold the period key. Fortunately you don’t actually have to type “.com” as frequently these days to land on a Web page.

The positives by far outweigh the negatives, starting with aesthetics. The built-in weather app doesn’t merely tell you what it’s doing outside, but it shows you — you see animated clouds, raindrops or reflections from the sun.

Control Center is arguably the handiest new feature. It appears on any screen when you swipe up from the bottom. It gives you fast access to brightness controls, wireless settings and utility apps such as the calculator and flashlight. You can also turn on AirDrop, a feature new to iOS that lets you wirelessly share photos, pictures, contacts and other files with people close by who have iOS 7-capable devices.

I can strongly recommend either new iPhone but especially the 5s. But with iOS 7 dressing up your current device, you may not have to upgrade right away.

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